36 Owen would do if they were sent to America? They would scrap the fifty states and establish five hundred and twenty instead." According to him, the Bosnian capital is not besieged but, rather, is besieging the Serb forces around it. Although Rogatica-and seventy per cent of Bosnia-Herzegovina-was now firmly in Serbian hands, he saw his na- tion as the eternal victim. 'We are heav- enly people," he said, "because more of us are in heaven than on earth." And in no time he was spinning into a history lecture that started with Kosovo Polje. Thank God the Serbs, the last bastion of civilization, were here, because otherwise Europe would have been flooded by the forces of Islam. Goran Mandié, the computer repair- man turned journalist, grabbed a piece of paper and drew a sketchy map: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and the other Islamic countries on the right, and on the far left Bosnia, represented as a wedge pushing westward. And if we wanted to know how anCIent the Serb civilization was Vasiljevié recommended we look in his- tory books to see who introduced the knife and fork to Europe. "We! The Serbs!" He was friendly but tough: drinking and talking with him was per- mitted, but taking notes was forbidden, because how could he be sure that we would write the truth? The "write the truth" line is a recurrent tune here: all Serbs feel that the international media are against them, that they are innocent victims of a world conspiracy. When the rest of our hosts left the room for a moment to consult about what to do with us, Goran quickly whis- pered that he would like to speak with us later. But then Vasiljevié came back and announced that the Commander did not want us to stay in Rogatica. We were es- corted to the checkpoint and asked to leave. (On the way back, we met Larry Hollingworth, from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He told us that on the previ- ous day K}lsié had refused to let him travel to Zepa, calling him a "secret Muslim" and a "carrier of codes" for the Sarajevo government. Larry had been forced out of Rogatica at gunpoint.) On our next visit to town, a few days later, Goran invited us to spend the night We met his wife, Nada, his mother-in-law, and his two sons, Boris and Stefan. (The boys were playing on the porch with a huge artillery shell case when we arrived) N ada insisted on cooking dinner for us. We had brought a few rolls from the Holiday Inn and some cans of food from the French Army commissary at the Sarajevo air- port, but Goran and Nada showed less interest in the pâté than in the stale rolls: these were baked in their beloved town, from which they had escaped a year ago, leaving behind their friends, their apart- ment, their car, and almost all their belongings. They were probably the most dissi- dent of all the Serbs we met, because they expressed no hatred of the Mus- lims, only fear: Goran was convinced that if he were now in Sarajevo his two little sons would be killed, simply be- cause they were Serbs, and N ada asked whether it was true that Serbs who re- mained in the capital were kept in cellars by the Muslims, because she had heard this on TV. What was most stunning, however, was their ignorance of the current situation in their home town: they didn't know that the trams had not been running in Sarajevo for the past year; they had never heard of the massa- cres in breadlines and in the markets. They had never seen the photographs of skinny men behind the barbed wire of Serb camps, either. Nada showed us the family photograph album, explain- ing where they used to live, and she and her husband had tears in their eyes when we described to them the daily death toll, the makeshift cemeteries in parks and squares, the constant shelling of Kosevo Hospital, which was near their former apartment. It became clear that there had been a near-total in- formation blockade in this Republika Srpska. The only television stations that people here have been watchIng for the past year were broadcasting from Belgrade and Pale, both of which sup- plied a fierce anti-Muslim line of propa- ganda. This was probably the only place in the world where the carnage wrought by Serb regulars and irregulars on civil- 1rl I JI - " , .....--. - --.:=:::-- \ - - ...: ;.. - Y': ...: .== - ------......... ...::::. ::: · "" . ..,.,.. --...- Þ-" JJ. .:-:;;. ,.;..... J.... A -;-;; . , ............. '- , , , - .. - ....... .... .... .. JCIC ................:- ---........ ... ...,. .11' "'..., . ' _ ............ , ' " ... .. .... ............ . ;.;;.. ............... ............. THE NEW YORKER, JULY 12, 1993 ia Muslims, which we witnessed daily in Sarajevo, was not on the evening news. W HEN the Bosnian Serb Parliament rejected the Vance-Owen plan and decided to hold a referendum on it, John and I went back to Rogatica once more, to observe the voting. At the by now familiar checkpoint, we were di- rected to the municipal council, and we found ourselves watching the same crazy play but with different actors: again we enjoyed the hospitality of Rogatica's Serbs, and again it was wrapped in pro- Serb and anti -Muslim rhetoric. "Serbs are an old nation in a new territory," we were told, and "sociologists can prove that the Muslims from here are in fact Serbs." Kosovo Polje and the knife and fork were cited, too. Nodding and obediently taking notes so as not to arouse their suspicions, we asked to see a few polling stations There were no objections. The director ofRogatica's automobile- parts factory, Milorad Jankovié, who is known as Miéa, was the president of the referendum commission in Rogatica. He generously offered to go with us for a tour, ordered a couple of sandwiches, and grabbed his pistol, and we hit the road. During the next seven hours, we visited three polling stations. Everywhere we were warmly welcomed, and every- where we heard the same thing: the Vance-Owen plan would be rejected, because it meant Muslim occupation of Serb land. As for the referendum's fair- ness, it was comparable to that of all the elections I saw in my youth. (I should add that I grew up in a totalitarian Com- munist state.) When we returned to Rogatica, Miéa invited us into the municipal-council office for coffee and a drink. There was a new group of people there, all friendly and all wanting to tell us about the murderous plans of the Sarajevo govern- ment, and the dangers of Islam in gen- eraL Just as they were zooming in on the knife-and-fork bit, in came a short man with jagged teeth, wearing a sort of khaki McDonald's cap with gold trim. He was accompanied by two body- guards: one was plain-looking; the other made me think of a forest-grown hip- pie-abundant beard, long hair with a topknot held by a blue ribbon, an ear- ring, and, hanging from his belt, a knife and two gun holsters with folk- like fringes. More drInks were served.